HOUSTON—While some companies view data science as disruptive, oilfield service provider Baker Hughes, a GE company (NYSE: BHGE), has found value in adopting technological enhancements. Drones, artificial intelligence and machine learning have opened up the landscape for BHGE, according to Jackie Wallace, senior vice president of data and analytics at BHGE.

Wallace, one of the featured speakers at the Houston Energy Breakfast hosted by KCA on March 23, detailed how the company’s adoption of data science has been the opposite of disruptive. In fact, Wallace said that by capitalizing on data and analytics, BHGE has gone from “an operational cost to a total value procreation.”

“By harnessing this data as our most valuable resource that we have available to us, we feel that we have really leapfrogged performance in ways that’s really going to enable us to bring stable solutions to our customers,” Wallace said.

As part of its digital transformation, Wallace said the company found a need to create a digital ecosystem. The focus of this network, she said, is to offer a platform where BHGE’s data and its customer data can securely coexist.

BHGE has integrated remote monitoring into its list of operational assets, which Wallace said has both reduced risks and improved operations.

“By having remote-monitoring capabilities, we can actually monitor well-to-well simultaneously and apply those learnings as we go,” she said.

In creating this new “digital ecosystem,” BHGE has capitalized on the use of drones. The company has used drones for its pipeline inspections and to become more engaged with customers, according to Wallace.

“The data from the drones is providing us with real impactful information because it’s helping us remove the risks associated with operating in harsh areas where we are performing these inspections,” she said.

Wallace said by combining the drone data it collects with artificial intelligence and analytics, the company is able to perform the inspections visually and thus have a greater impact on determining defects, corrosion and cracks.

“If you look at the inspection cycle, which is typically 40 days, we’re able to reduce that down to five days and we did this all while incurring zero safety risks as well as zero downtime for the operations,” she added.

Cindy Yeilding, senior vice president at BP Americas, said that BP (NYSE: BP) has also leveraged big data analytics into both its onshore and offshore oil fields.

Particularly, Yeilding said BP and BHGE have been co-developing Plant Operations Advisor start-up technology. The offshore digital technology is designed to improve safety, reliability and efficiency in the Gulf of Mexico operations such as bringing big data and big decisions in real-time, she said.

BP has been able to obtain another significant benefit from big data: seismic imaging, Yeilding said. Through the use of the company’s supercomputer, which computes over 9,000 trillion calculations per second, she said BP has been able to “kind of crack the next nut in subsalt imaging.

“Now we can find a field within a field in our Atlantis project and unlock assets to what we believe has 200 million barrels of profitable resources,” she continued. “We’re taking this technology and applying it further in the Gulf of Mexico, and we’ll apply it to our portfolio globally as well.”

BP has also deployed augmented reality safety glasses, iPads and real-time sensor data in its oil field operations, Yeilding said.

Moving forward, Wallace said she expects a digital shift between the next two to five years due to technology naturally becoming more intuitive. As an industry she urged companies to infuse that knowledge back into business operations and pointed out that strong executive sponsorship is futile to being successful in that transition.

“If we really embrace data science—and we do it well—it should be enhanced by everyone just like the smart phone,” she said. “Business leaders need to be all in.”

Mary Holcomb can be reached at mholcomb@hartenergy.com